Little Known English Facts and the History of the English Language

1. Little Known English Facts and the History of the English Language

2. Interesting Facts • The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed. • Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions! • What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France! • "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order!

3. More Facts! • The most used letter in the English alphabet is ‘E’, and ‘Q’ is the least used. • Goddessship is the only word in the English language with a triple letter! • No English words rhyme fully with orange, silver, or month (there are, however, some partial rhymes, or pararhymes, for these words, such as salver for silver and lozenge for orange). • The only three words in the English language to have 2 consecutive ”U’s is vacuum, residuum, and continuum.

4. And more! • The oldest words in the English language are around 14,000 years old, originating in a pre-Indo-European language group called Nostratic ("our language") by experts. Words from this language group that survive in modern English include apple (apal), bad (bad), gold (gol), and tin (tin). • Typewriter is the longest word typed only with the top row of a standard QWERTY keyboard.

5. And even more!!!! • The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis”. The only other word with the same amount of letters ispneumonoultra-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural. • French was the official language of England for over 600 years. • "Four" is the only number whose number of letters in the name equals the number. • English is the official language of 53 countries.

6. The Origins of Words • Latin: 28.24% • Germanic 25% • Lang d’oil 28.4% • Greek 5.23% • Other 8.31%

7. English History The first publish english book was Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer The English language is the official language in 53 countries English is a west Germanic language

8. Bibliographie • http://www.world-english.org/facts.htm • http://www.dumbfacts.com/facts/directory-of-facts/just-dumb/english/ • www.funshun.com/amazing-facts/language-facts2.html • http://www.sentex.net/~ajy/facts/words.html • http://www.wikipedia.ca/ • http://www.inglish.com/